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Welcome from Head of School

“Our twenty-three acre campus and the beautiful coastline, woods, and water of Massachusetts are our classrooms.’’

The first time I drove off the pavement of Hart Street and onto the gravel at Glen Urquhart School, I felt at home. A dirt road has always signaled possibility to me, a willingness to step off the beaten path. When I read the small sign explaining that the school had chosen to preserve and protect the wetlands on campus by leaving the entry unpaved, I recognized the conscious embodiment of environmental and educational values that mirror my own.

Beyond a challenging academic program, for me, one measure of a great school is awareness of place. Understanding the world around them as an integrated whole allows students to see the origins of ideas and concepts and how they are interconnected. Place gives learning context and, therefore, meaning. This awareness is central to GUS, an idea embedded in and at the heart of our academic curriculum. Our twenty-three acre campus and the beautiful coastline, woods, and water of Massachusetts are our classrooms.

Maybe like you, as I thought about joining the GUS community, I reached out to its parents. I spoke to a mother of two GUS alumni who said that more than anything else, Glen Urquhart provided her children “a place to be themselves.” Over twenty-five years, in schools ranging from thirty-six students to nearly two thousand, I’ve learned that small communities like GUS where each child is known as an individual are the most powerful. I appreciate that GUS values both people and place and that children grow into authentic individuals here.

When I asked a local business owner to describe the school to me, she replied, “GUS is the school with values.” Glen Urquhart’s dedication to service learning as seen in our partnership with the Food Project and to inclusivity as demonstrated through our notable commitment to tuition assistance also stood out to me as further measures of a great school. GUS understands that both service and diversity are good for all students and families and that we are preparing students for a world with real needs, in ways immediate and sustained.

As I lead Glen Urquhart School forward, I find myself returning to these elemental values: place, people, world. Above all, I value the health—intellectual, moral, and emotional—the integrity, the joyful spark of school community. Join us. Step off the beaten path.